Before Sunset (R, 80 mins.)
Nine years after they fell in love in Vienna, now memoirist Ethan Hawke meets Julie Delpy in her Paris hometown while on his book tour. The two are drawn to each other as if to fate itself, and the audience doesn’t breathe until it knows whether broken hearts will be broken again. Richard Linklater’s quietly spectacular real-time film is the best of the year.

Blissfully Yours (unrated, 145 mins.)
In the plainest terms, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s masterpiece “Blissfully Yours” tells the story of three stressed-out people taking the afternoon off and driving into the jungle for a picnic and sex. A Burmese immigrant named Min (Min Oo) visits the doctor escorted by his girlfriend Roong (Kanokporn Tongaram) and an older woman, Orn (Jenjira Jansuda). Like all great cinema, “Blissfully Yours” arouses and satiates desire.

Bright Young Things (R, 106 mins.)
First our hero, Adam Symes (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his beloved Nina (Ms. Mortimer) are engaged, then they aren’t, then they are, and so on. Meanwhile they attend gay parties, lavish lunches, and take jaunts to the country. Director Stephen Fry’s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Vile Bodies” removes the ironic gaze on England’s effete jazz-age set, and there’s not much left.

The Brown Bunny (unrated, 92 mins.)
Writer, director, editor, and photographer Vincent Gallo stars as Bud, a motorcycle fanatic on a cross-country trip. Those who wait out Bud’s many gazes through a bug-splattered van window will be treated to Chloe Sevigny performing graphic fellatio on her co-star. Still, this one-man-band show has a pretty good tune.

A Dirty Shame (NC-17, 89 mins.)
Sex vibes are taking over a sleepy street in Baltimore in this variation on the standard John Waters conflict of liberated outsiders vs. repressive status quo – his funniest in a long while. Neighbors are swinging, lesbians grope one another in public, retired folk are heavy petting on the front lawn. Selma Blair steals the show as the outlandishly zaftig Caprice, a go-go dancing super freak.

First Daughter (PG, 104 mins.)
President Mackenzie’s (Michael Keaton) secret servicemen-surrounded teenage daughter (Katie Holmes) just wants to have a normal college experience. No chance. “First Daughter” is a father daughter bonding story that should be voted out of the box office.

The Forgotten (PG-13, 91 mins.)
Julianne Moore is a mother whose 9-year-old son died in a plane crash. When all evidence of his existence begins to disappear, and even her husband tells her she never had a son, she begins to question her sanity. With a twisty plot that keeps you guessing, and at least three jolts that’ll make you jump in your chair.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (PG-13, 99 mins.)
The images in Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to his superb 1995 anime speak for themselves – stunningly rendered cityscapes; sleek, uncanny automatons; monumental phantasmagoria – but the movie just won’t shut up.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (unrated, 81 mins.)
Set almost entirely inside a decrepit Taipei movie house about to shut down, Tsai Ming-liang’s latest masterpiece is a peculiar kind of haunted house movie. A gimpy cashier (Chen Shiang-chyi), a snacking projectionist (Kang-sheng Lee), a young Japanese man (Kiyonobu Mitamura), and several ghosts gather around the fading flame of “Dragon Inn,” a classic swordplay flick, to say goodbye.

Hero (PG-13, 96 mins.)
Nameless warrior (Jet Li) has a showdown with deadly assassins Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Broken Sword (Tony Leung), who imperil the ruthless King of Qin (Chen Dao Ming). “Hero” mounts many delights for aficionados of multidirectional digi-fu while valorizing personal sacrifice to centralized political power.

Intimate Strangers (R, 105 mins.)
Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) races into an appointment with a psychiatrist to discuss her marital problems. Unfortunately, her appointment isn’t with Dr. Moonier, but with William Faber (Fabrice Luchini), a fussy tax attorney, whose office Anna mistakenly entered. Director Patrice Leconte’s focus on how the deceptions that follow fall apart is a paean to Hitchcock.

Infernal Affairs (R, 97 mins.)
Yan is an undercover police officer who infiltrated the triads 10 years ago, at the behest of his chief (Anthony Wong). Ming (Tony Lau) is a dirty cop working for the other side. Directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s take mature approach to character development suggests while not stinting on the action you expect from a Hong Kong crime thriller.

The Motorcycle Diaries (R, 128 mins.)
Walter Salles’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” focuses on a 12,425 km journey that a young Che Guevara tool took through Latin America with his friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna). The trip is recreated through a lushly photographed series of terrifically acted and expertly written vignettes in this superior road movie.

Mr. 3000 (PG-13, 103 mins.)
Bernie Mac stars as Stan Ross, one of the greatest hitters – and jerks – in baseball, back after years of retirement to get his 3,000th hit. Mr. Mac is very funny as the Scrooge like athlete and the screenplay (by Eric Champnella, Keith Mitchell, and Howard Gould) has plenty of humor and a refreshing lack of reverence for the game.

The Models of Pickpocket (unrated, 75 mins.)
A visit with the three main figures of Robert Bresson’s “Pickpocket” is the subject of this footnote for the Bresson cult: Pierre Laymarie currently works in Caen as a genetic researcher; Marika Green, an actress, lives in Austria; and Martin Lasalle, the pickpocket himself, was found in Mexico.

Red Lights (unrated, 101 mins.)
Antoine Dunant (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), an alcoholic office drone, drives with his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet) to the Basque country. They squabble, Helene disappears, and Antoine picks up a hitchhiker (Vincent Deniard). Mr. Kahn’s graceful camera maintains an odd counterpoint to the tensions onscreen in this sly film.

Remember Me, My Love (unrated, 125 mins.)
The Ristuccias are a remarkably generic unhappy Italian family. When pater familias Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) meets an old flame at about the same time that his wife Giulia (Laura Morante) considers returning to the stage, their marriage loses quite a bit of ground. But Gabriele Muccino’s film is filled with charming actors and cannot help but be charming itself.

September Tapes (R, 95 mins.)
Christian Johnson’s “September Tapes” is a mockumentary about a gung-ho American journalist who heads to Afghanistan to go inside the war. But Al Qaeda is not an imaginary bogeyman, and pulling this sort of thing off requires some tact. Mr. Johnson is up to the task.

Shaun of the Dead (R, 99 mins.)
Sad sack Shaun (Simon Pegg, who wrote the film with his director, Edgar Wright) goes through great lengths to save his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) from zombies ransacking London. His weapon of choice: a blunt cricket bat. Messrs. Wright and Pegg have produced an instant cult classic that doesn’t forget a few scares.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (PG, 107 mins.)
When giant robots go on a rampage, it’s up to Sky Captain, a high-end hunky action-hero and defender of New York City (Jude Law), and his intrepid reporter ex-girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow), to save Gotham. First-time director Kevin Conway’s endearing, mostly computer-generated homage to 1930s futurism conjures a time when the future was filled with campy, ultramodern hope.